Sailing in D&D

Janx · Feb 4, 2004

I'm working on researching some sailing stuff for my D&D campaign. It's a nautical campaign (most of the world is water).

Anyway, I got the Seafarer's handbook, and noticed the ship sizes are a bit off from a historical perspective.

Namely, the largest ship size they use is 130 feet.

Whereas, a quick sampling of http:\\www.schoonerman.com (a nautical site) shows ships easily getting bigger than that. Obviously, the era comes into play.

Another factor I discovered, is SFH's ships are rather wide. Statistically, most the real ships are 4-6 times as long as they are wide. SFH's ships are like, 3 times as wide at best.

The colossal ship with a good set of sails tops out at 44 feet per round or 15 MPH or 13knots.

This is really fast (one site mentioned a clipper ship going 19knots) and seems a little too fast for the era.

Anyone else disappointed in the "realism" of currently available d20 ships?

Janx

arwink · Feb 4, 2004

Janx said:
Anyone else disappointed in the "realism" of currently available d20 ships?

Janx

Nope. I don't sail, neither do my players. That kind of detail doesn'tr bother us as long as the games moving forward.

Besides which, the last time they were on a boat it was flying, so the logistics were glossed over anyway

Kid Charlemagne · Feb 4, 2004

A quick glance at that site and I couldn't find any examples of a medieval ship to see if they indicated any going over 130 ft. Clearly, ships got MUCH bigger in the 1700's and 1800's, but most games are replicating the 14th century technology.

The closest I could find was the Santa Maria, Columbus' flagship, at 98 feet and 26 feet wide, 3.8 times as long as wide.

Jolly Giant · Feb 4, 2004

I started a pirate-campaign 3 years ago (They've gone epic now and are tarveling the planes in a giant flying, planeshifting ship, but that's another story!), and was shocked when I started to read what the DMG had to say about ships...

Sizes, speeds, prices, size of crew - none of it seemed right to me.

I got some books on sailingships - from back to roman/greek/egyptian era, via viking longships, to 19th century full riggers - and quickly decided to ignore all my gaming books had to say on the matter!

I ended up making some 20+ pages of tables and notes, that I will not (sorry!) be posting here. But you might well be able to buy a PDF product with all this material in sometime soon!

It will include simple, straightforward rules for how winds of various strength influence the speed and maneuveability of the different ships, lists of optimal and minimum crews to sail any given ship, rules for sea-sickness, new feats, spells, PrCs etc.

^Graff · Feb 4, 2004

If the campaign world is mostly water, it stands to reason that their ship-building technology would be more advanced than their land-based tech. Just go ahead and house-rule the SFH to make them longer and slower. Make them a century or two more advanced than the rest of the tech of the time period that you have. A 13th-century setting that is entirely naval should have 15th or 16-century ships, due to the focus on shipbuilding over anything else. It shouldn't be too hard to modify; the if you overlook the speed and sizes, SFH's rules are pretty good, IIRC. At the very least, they're better than the ones in the DMG.

Kid Charlemagne · Feb 4, 2004

Take a look at Broadsides from Living Imagination - I have the Seafarer's Handbook, and was unimpressed. Broadsides has a lot more variety of real-world ships. It's largest real-world ship is a Royal Galleon with a length of 200', and a beam of 50'. It has a speed of 7 knots. The fastest ship has a speed of 11 knots.

You might want to look there for better realism.

Janx · Feb 4, 2004

Well I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed the problem.

For my part, I'm happy with the ship concepts in SFH, I just want stats that seem correct.

The point about the tech level is correct. I would agree that most D&D stuff seems scaled for 14th-15th century ship sizes. Whereas most people probably imagine sailing ships like what you see on Pirates of the Carribean.

For me, I want construction rules that are concise and answer:
how long is the ship?
how wide is the ship?
How many decks below the main deck?
how many decks above the main deck?
how much of the ship is below water?
How many sails?
How many oars?
How fast does it go (modified by propulsion, basic wind, ship shape)
How much crew does it take
How much can it carry
How tall is the ship?
How many guns can I put on the ship

By missing a few of these questions, SFH causes problems when I want to design a ship, and I need to know how many decks to draw in on the plan. Or how tall is it, for sailing under that bridge. Or what deck starts leaking when the PCs swim over and drill a hole in the hull. Or what if the ship sizes increase, beyond 130 feet.

It'd also be good to have an appreciation for realistic ships, so more fantastic ships stand out. Knowing that Columbus' ships were about 75 feet long and 25 feet wide or so is useful. But then clipper ships were easily reaching 130 feet long in the 1800s. In my game, the party's ship is about 100 feet long, and it was considered a smaller vessel (solely because I thought that was small).

I might consider my own revised formulas, to accomodate this. Something like:

Choose width
Choose ship length factor (3-6)
Ship's length = width times length factor
Ships Speed modifer = Length Factor / 10
Ship's Mast height = Length * .8
Ship's height (exluding masts) = width /length factor
Ships Draft = ships' height * length factor/10

This might be reasonable, though some numbers might need tweaking.
Thus a 25' wide ship, 100 feet long is:
Beam: 25
LF: 4
Length=100'
Speed modifier=.4
Ship's Mast Height = 80'
Ship's Height = 10'
Ship's Draft = 4'

The implication is, a narrow ship goes faster, but sits lower in the water. A wider ship can be taller and have more decks. A deck is probably no more than 6' tall, with the bottom most space being ballast. The top deck would also not be counted in that forumla. Thus the above ship would get me a main deck, 1 below deck, and a 4' space for ballast. I'd probably question that my ship has so few decks.

Any thoughts,
Janx

Arnwyn · Feb 4, 2004

Janx said:
Anyone else disappointed in the "realism" of currently available d20 ships?

Not at all. We don't know any better, so we don't particularly care.

Now as to your post above, I do agree with you that a lot of that information should be available - that's what I find important. Thankfully, my group uses the far superior 2e book Of Ships & the Sea (which we adapted to d20) - it covers most of that info. (For the rest, we use the Spelljammer deck plans for the ships listed in Of Ships & the Sea - they're there - and Spelljammer's War Captains Companion box has fairly comprehensive construction rules.)

So for "realism" - we don't care. For more info, we do care.

Mark Plemmons · Feb 4, 2004

Janx said:
I might consider my own revised formulas, to accomodate this. Something like:

Choose width
Choose ship length factor (3-6)
Ship's length = width times length factor
Ships Speed modifer = Length Factor / 10
Ship's Mast height = Length * .8
Ship's height (exluding masts) = width /length factor
Ships Draft = ships' height * length factor/10

Well, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I'd suggest checking out "Salt & Sea Dogs: the Pirates of Tellene." I worked really hard on Chapter 6: Ships, trying to make it as realistic as possible, while still keeping a ship construction system that emulates the D&D v3.5 rules AND making sure their already-mentioned ships don't get screwed up.

It basically follows these steps:
- come up with a concept
- choose ship type (galley, keelboat, longship, rowboat, sailing ship, warship). Each type has traits (such as size, space/reach, hull/rigging hardness, AC and base speed), and features (draft/length/beam, # of decks, crew, cargo wt). These traits and features modify other aspects of the ship, such as weapon spaces and weight (weight = ((length x beam x draft) / 1,350) - current cargo), to name a couple.

At this point, you've got a very basic ship. Then you can choose to add/modify aspects of the ship, like sails and oars (which affect speed), special attacks, special qualities, and so on. It's a lot like designing a monster, but with more math, since most things affect something else.

For example, exceed your cargo tonnage, and your ship's Seaworthiness, speed and maneuverability suffers. But you can design your ship with special qualities, such as increased cargo space, to offset that. It really allows a lot of variation within WotC's six basic ship types.

There's also predesigned ships and ship templates, for those that don't want to create a ship from scratch.